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A refereed publication, The Modern Language Journal is dedicated
to promoting scholarly exchange among teachers and researchers of all modern
foreign languages and English as a second language. This journal publishes documented
essays, quantitative and qualitative research studies, response articles, and
editorials that challenge paradigms of language learning and teaching.The Modern Language Journal offers 6 or 7 essays or research
studies per quarterly issue, a professional calendar of events and news, a
listing of relevant articles in other journals, an annual survey of doctoral
degrees in all areas concerning foreign and second languages, and reviews of
scholarly books, textbooks, videotapes, and software.
JSTOR provides a digital archive of the print version of The Modern
Language Journal. The electronic version of The Modern Language
Journal is available at http://www.interscience.wiley.com.
Authorized users may be able to access the full text articles at this site.The Modern Language Journal also offers a fifth issue each year
which alternates between a Focus Issue and a Monograph.

The "moving wall" represents the time period between the last issue
available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal.
Moving walls are generally represented in years. In rare instances, a
publisher has elected to have a "zero" moving wall, so their current
issues are available in JSTOR shortly after publication.
Note: In calculating the moving wall, the current year is not counted.
For example, if the current year is 2008 and a journal has a 5 year
moving wall, articles from the year 2002 are available.

Terms Related to the Moving Wall

Fixed walls: Journals with no new volumes being added to the archive.

Absorbed: Journals that are combined with another title.

Complete: Journals that are no longer published or that have been
combined with another title.

Abstract

This article considers whether the use of specific communication strategies can improve learners' English proficiency in communicative tasks. Japanese college students (n = 62) participated in a 12-week course of English lessons using a communicative approach with strategy training. To investigate the influence of specific strategy use, their performance on a posttraining conversation test was analyzed through multiple data collection procedures. Transcripts of the test were made and then analyzed in terms of production rate, the number of errors, and actual strategy use. An Oral Communication Strategy Inventory was introduced to elicit participants' communication strategy use for a self-report questionnaire procedure. These results were compared with participants' retrospective protocol data regarding their oral test performance. The findings confirmed that strategies for maintaining discourse and negotiation of meaning could enhance learners' communicative ability. Yet the students used a relatively small number of examples of modified output, which indicated that they might not have enough opportunities to improve the form of their utterances.